A brief history of palaeolimnology in the UK from 1920s to 1980s. This was a plenary talk given at the International Paleolimnology Symposium, Glasgow, August 2012.

1. UK Palaeolimnology: the pioneering days
Rick Battarbee
University College London
12th International Paleolimnology Symposium
Glasgow

2. The 12th International Paleolimnology Symposium
2006 -
1988-
The 1st International Paleolimnology Symposium, Tihany 1967
When and how did palaeolimnology begin in the UK?

3. The Freshwater Biological Association (FBA) was founded in 1929. Wray Castle, close
to the shore of Lake Windermere, was its first home and W.H. Pearsall was one of the
founding fathers. It moved to Ferry House in 1950
Wray Castle
Ferry House
William Harold Pearsall (1891-1964)

4. Windermere Catchment
Pickering (2001)

5. In 1921 Pearsall proposed that the major lakes in the Lake District could be
arranged in a series (the ”Pearsall Series”) from “primitive” to “evolved”.
Pearsall WH (1921) Proc. R. Soc. London, 92, 259-284

6. Wastwater Crummock Water
Windermere Esthwaite Water

7. The first core in the UK was taken when Clifford Mortimer hammered a steel tube
into the marginal sediments of Windermere in Low Wray Bay in 1937. It followed
a hydrographic survey of the lake by the Admiralty using an echo sounder,
probably the first such use in freshwater in the UK
CH Mortimer 1911-2010

8. The echo sounder had “showed not only the depth of the water but also the depth of soft
mud deposits overlying the hard floor of the lake…” (P 34, FBA Annual Report 1938).
Mortimer & Worthington described how they had subsequently used the echo sounder
to make comparative surveys of Wastwater, Ennerdale, Derwent-water, Bassenthwaite
and Esthwaite lakes in the “primitive” to “evolved” series of Pearsall.
Returning to the Pearsall hypothesis, they argued “one would expect to find much
more deposit of mud in an evolved lake than a primitive one, and that is born out
forcibly by the echo-sounding records” (p. 36)
And then to prove that “the distance
between the first and second echoes really
represents the depth of mud, a boring
apparatus was devised to extract cores of
the deposits” (p 34).
Mortimer & Worthington 1938 FBA Annual Report, pp 33-38

9. The core from Low Wray Bay was especially interesting as it penetrated the
basal sediments showing a clay-mud-clay sequence that we now refer to as the
Late-glacial including the relatively warm period known in the UK as the
Windermere Interstadial .
“Cores of deposits from Windermere were described [last
year] which were obtained by a simple steel tube borer
fitted with a ramming weight. The friction involved in
pushing such a tube several feet into the deposits cause
compression of the core, which is a serious drawback in
stratigraphical work. Accordingly Mr B.M.Jenkin, an
experienced engineer and an old friend of the Association,
has given much time and skill to solving the problem of
obtaining cores from below a considerable depth of water,
without distorting their contents in any way . He has
constructed a deposit-sampler which is ideal for accurate
stratigraphical work on lake deposits”
(Mortimer, FBA Annual Report for 1939, p 57).
Mortimer & Worthington 1938 FBA Annual Report, pp. 33-38

10. The design of the corer referred to was published in 1938 by Jenkin & Mortimer in
Nature, and an improved version later in 1941, also in Nature, by Jenkin,
Mortimer & Pennington.
Winifred Pennington, Clifford Mortimer and assistants, Low Wray Bay 1940 (Courtesy of the FBA)

11. It was Winifred Pennington who took up the palaeolimnological challenge, inspired by the
the sediment cores being collected from Low Wray Bay. It became the central topic of her
PhD thesis, combining diatom and pollen analysis (Pennington 1943, 1947)
Pennington, W. 1943 New Phytologist, 42, 1-27

12. Windermere diatom diagram (65m depth) Winifred Pennington
1915-2007
• the first diatom diagram to be published
in the UK
• focus on the Late and Post-glacial lake
evolution
• argued that step changes were not
consistent with Pearsall’s theory of
continuous evolution
• but fitted Hutchinson & Wollack’s idea
of “trophic equilibrium”
• noted that the Asterionella expansion
at the top was an indication of nutrient
enrichment from human settlement
Pennington, W. 1943 New Phytologist, 42, 1-27

13. Jenkin then developed a surface mud sampler that became very popular, and still
commercially available, although used more by limnologists than palaeolimnologists
Mortimer, C.H. 1942 Journal of Ecology 30, 147-201

14. It allowed Mortimer to take cores for his classic studies of mud-water
interface chemistry, in which he returned to the Pearsall theme of lake evolution
“If an increase in productivity, not necessarily uniform or continuous,
is an evolutionary tendency, and the lake is sufficiently shallow, a
point in time will be reached at which the mud surface becomes
reduced. This will have the effect, noted in Esthwaite Water, of
accelerating (a) oxygen depletion in the hypolimnion, and (b) the
release of ions from mud to water”
Mortimer CH, 1941/2 Journal of Ecology

15. Winifred Pennington moved to Leicester University in 1945 to join her husband Tom Tutin
and bring up a family of four children. Although she remained very active the work on lake
development was picked up by others, Frank Round in the first instance. He carried out
diatom analysis on Holocene sediments from two sites, Kentmere and Esthwaite Water.
Kentmere
Round FE 1957 New Phytologist 56, 98-126
Esthwaite
At both sites a mid-Holocene shift to more
acid-tolerant taxa was observed. Round concluded
“this contrasts sharply with the Windermere results
and also with Pearsall’s (1921) Frank E Round
suggestion that lake basins evolved 1927-2010
slowly and continuously during the
Post-glacial period”
Round FE 1961 New Phytologist 60, 43-59

16. John Mackereth joined the FBA in 1946 as a chemist but made several major contributions
across the field of limnology and palaeolimnology. Most memorable was his pneumatic
sediment corer (Mackereth 1958), designed to be lightweight in comparison to the
Kullenberg and Jenkin corers and to not rely on rods in comparison with the Livingstone corer
FJH Mackereth 1921-1972
Tragically he died very young at the age of 50 some years after an accident involving the corer

17. It was this corer, however, that he used to collect cores for his classic papers on
sediment chemistry (Mackereth 1965, 1966) and on palaeomagnetism (Mackereth 1971).
It was also used by Winifred Pennington, Liz Haworth, Frank Oldfield, Roy Thompson
and others in following years
The objective of Mackereth’s study of the chemistry of lake sediments in the Lake District
was to follow up the ideas of long-term lake evolution and the relationship between lakes
and their catchments previously put forward by Pearsall, Pennington, Round and others
• He chose sites across the Pearsall
Series from Ennerdale to Esthwaite
• He focussed especially on C/N, Na and K,
Fe and Mn, P and the halogens
Mackereth, FJH 1966 Phil Trans R Soc 250, 165-213

18. His observations on Na and K were particularly relevant to the debate on lake evolution.
He argued the concentration of Na and K should be directly proportional to the intensity
of erosion in the catchment and that the decline in Na and K indicated a shift from
erosion to leaching as soils and vegetation developed in the catchment causing a
steady impoverishment of base cations in the soils and in the lakes
“The observations presented do not therefore support a concept of lake evolution from
relative poverty towards richness, but suggest rather that a phase of relative mineral
richness occurred quite early in the post-glacial history of the lakes” p 183.
Mackereth, FJH 1966 Phil Trans R Soc 250, 165-213 NB but see Engstrom & Wright 1984!

19. The development of the Mackereth corer allowed long cores to be taken in the smaller,
more remote, upland tarns in the Lake District. Liz Haworth, studying for a Masters degree
in the University of Wales (Bangor), carried out diatom analysis of a core from Blea Tarn,
that also showed clear evidence of early to mid-Holocene acidification
Haworth EY 1969 Journal of Ecology, 57, 429-439

20. The late 1960s marks the end of the first phase of the history of UK palaeolimnology.
It was a period of exploration, of designing corers and developing chemical and biological
analytical methods
The intellectual debate was dominated by a quest to understand how lakes developed
over post-glacial time
Pearsall’s idea of gradual lake evolution, from less to more productive conditions, was tested
and found inadequate. The palaeo-evidence suggested that lakes either underwent rapid
change before reaching a trophic equilibrium (Windermere) or became less productive and,
in some cases, more acidic over time (Blea Tarn)
The emphasis on recent palaeolimnology and the role of human activity in fundamentally
altering lake ecosystems through nutrient pollution and acid deposition was yet to take
place. It was contingent on the development of new surface sediment corers and new dating
methods (principally 210Pb) that was to occur in the 1970s involving not just Winifred
Tutin’s group in the FBA, but also the new group established by Frank Oldfield in Coleraine.
But that’s a story for next time.....
Frank Oldfield

21. With thanks to:
Malcolm Elliott
John Lund
Hardy Schwamm
Liz Haworth
Jack Talling
Mike Dickson
And to
Dave Jewson

22. Another central figure was John Lund. He pioneered research
on diatom phytoplankton, especially in relation to nutrients.
He supervised the diatom studies of Frank Round and Liz Haworth
Example of the phytoplankton time series started in 1932 by WH Pearsall, taken over
by Lund in 1945 and continued today by the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology
Windermere
John Lund: 1912 -
Lund, JWG. 1949/50 Journal of Ecology